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• Collaborative brings together clinical and industry participants to develop cognitive technologies in imaging for multiple clinical service lines;
• As a member, Agfa HealthCare will put Watson to work to extract insights from previously ‘invisible’ unstructured imaging data.

Agfa HealthCare has joined the Watson Health medical imaging collaborative, a global initiative comprised of more than fifteen leading health systems, academic medical centers, ambulatory radiology providers and imaging technology companies. The collaborative aims to bring cognitive imaging into daily practice to help doctors address breast, lung, and other cancers; diabetes; eye health; brain disease; and heart disease and related conditions, such as stroke.

The role of the collaborative
Members of the collaborative plan to put Watson to work to extract insights from previously ‘invisible’ unstructured imaging data and combine that with a broad variety of data from other sources. In doing so, the efforts may help physicians make personalized care decisions relevant to a specific patient while building a body of knowledge to benefit broader patient populations. This information may include data from electronic health records, radiology and pathology reports, lab results, doctors’ progress notes, medical journals, clinical care guidelines and published outcomes studies.

Initial plans include training Watson and evaluating potential new offerings in a variety of patient care environments ranging from stand-alone ambulatory settings to integrated health delivery networks. The aim in doing so is to gather data based on diverse real-world experience and to share findings to inform how the medical community might reduce operational and financial inefficiencies, improve physician workflows, and adopt a patient-focused approach to improving patient care and outcomes.

Expertise and technology
James Jay, Vice President Imaging IT and Integrated Care Solutions businesses at Agfa HealthCare, elaborates: “We are very excited about the opportunity to collaborate with IBM and Watson. Healthcare systems are under enormous pressure to improve productivity; our combined expertise has the capability to harness the untapped power of technology to deliver the gains that have so far only been achieved in isolated use cases. Together we will look for ways to advance our customers’ ability to leverage the analytics power of Watson united with our own Enterprise Imaging platform, to assure that the right knowledge is available, at the right time, to help diagnose and treat their patients. We will be diving into specific use cases to turn the power of big data into real, tangible applications focused on specific improvements in either speed or accuracy of decisions.”

Luc Thijs, President of Agfa HealthCare, explains,“we will contribute to the success of Watson for three reasons. One, we are present in one out of two hospitals worldwide. Second, we develop leading e-Health platforms for Enterprise Imaging, Integrated Care, Population Health Management and Analytics. Last but not least, there is the clinical expertise of our people, an integral part of our company DNA.”

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